They say you should always respect your elders, and Graham, our hero of the day, did just that with his venerable BMW M5 from the E28 era. He originally bought the car in 1989 at a time when he already had a 325i in his garage. His business partner happened to have an M535i, which he liked, but ultimately decided to go all out and get the fully fledged M5.
Upon seeing an advert for the 1986 M5 in The Sunday Times, he jumped at the opportunity to purchase the sports sedan for a cool £20,000. It had only 20,000 miles (nearly 32,200 kilometers) back in the day. Throughout the years, the car racked up around 200,000 miles (almost 322,000 kilometers) on UK roads. It served as a daily driver for both personal and business purposes.
Don’t go into thinking it was mechanically flawless all this time because maintenance was quite expensive. The M5 E28 was fully rebuilt in the 1990s by BMW specialist Munich Legends from the UK. They needed a whole month to freshen up the performance sedan and make it run like new again. The owner spent a whopping £25,000, so more than what he originally paid for the car.
Although it hasn’t left him stranded on the side of the road, the M5 did break down once when his wife was driving. A faulty timing chain was the culprit, but he got it fixed in no time. Graham eventually decided to sell the car in 2013 to someone who took it back to Germany. At that time, he was working in Asia and therefore unable to drive it for an extended amount of time.
It has had two owners since then and is now showing about 233,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) on the odometer, so nearly as much as the distance to the moon. Graham says he’s owned no fewer than nine cars since he sold the M5 E28, but the seller’s remorse persisted all this time. When he got a tip that his old car was up for grabs, he didn’t hesitate to buy it back at an auction.
Source: Collecting Cars / YouTube
